falling_stars_vcfandomcom-20200213-history
Leviathan-class Battleship
The Leviathan is a class of nuclear powered hybrid battleship in service with the East German Volksmarine. The ships is the largest surface combatant in service with any navy and it roughly ties the Imperial Japanese Yamato-class battleships for largest surface non-carrier warships ever built, coming behind with only 1 meter of length and 2 meters of beam less. The Leviathan-class is exclusively built and serviced in Rostock at Neptun Werft's new large-scale drydocks. They are named after great mythological beasts. Background The Leviathan-class Battleship is the first class of large bluewater capital ship produced by either Germanies since 1941, as such, it is both a symbol of significant cultural influence and a design affected by the gap in tradition. First and foremost, the Leviathan class was designed with the intention of bringing back large warships' initial role as floating fortresses. This role had been lost in the late second world war due to the advent of air power, however, anti-air methods and weapon systems, as well as anti-missile equivalent, have since then been developed. Most modern warships have been built with little armor or protection, dispensing with them due to the belief that overwhelming firepower trumps all defense. The Leviathan class is the reverse of this philosophy and was designed to be a formidable bulwark against all current and predicted major threats, including aircrafts, anti-ship missiles and submarines. While the first drafts in the program that eventually conceived the Leviathans were started in 1991, construction of the ship did not start until the early 1999. This was due in part to the numerous revisions and refinements to the design and in part due to the fact that no shipyard large enough to build a ship such as the Leviathan existed in East Germany at the time. In 1993, a major expansion project was undertaken at the Neptun Werft facilities in Rostock to construct drydocks of the required size and capabilities, with the first oversize dry-dock being competed in 1998, and the second in 2003 Design Superstructure The Leviathan-class are 262 meters long overall and 37 meters wide at the the beam, with a draft of 9,3 meters. It displaces 39'700 long tons in standard displacement and 46'200 in full combat load, being significantly lighter than previous battleships of similar displacement, yet significantly heavier than the Kirov, its closest equivalent. This is due to the thickness and composition of its armor as well as its armament systems. Overall superstructure is made out of High-Strength Low-Alloy structural steel, while outer armor is made primarily of OM-S803 armor plating steel. The Leviathan class features a mixture of partial all-or-nothing and multi-layered defenses, where mission-critical areas such as the Citadel, powerplants and magazines are armored heavily, and non-critical areas are lightly armored. It is however to be noted that the 'lightly armored' sections are still more heavily armored than the citadels of the average modern warship, and that due to the great number of ordnance present on its design, larger proportions of its hull have to be covered with Magazine armor. The main building blocks of the armor scheme are 40mm thick OM-S803 plates and boron carbide ceramic plates, placed alternately. Light Armor sections feature two metal plates and two ceramic plates for a thickness of 80mm of metal plus composites, compared to the 76mm metal plating on the Kirov powerplant and the 64mm plating on the nimitz Citadel. Heavy Armor sections feature five standard sets of plates + one 50mm outermost layer of high-hardened OM-S803 matrix-composite plating interweaved with boron-nitride fibers, for a total of 250mm plus five layers of composite. All sections are backed with a final layer of Stahlseide spall lining. The Leviathan features a double-hull structure with longitudinal and lateral bulkheads to contain the effects of flooding and fire, with compartmentalized automatic fire-extinguishing mechanisms. The deck features a similar layered-defense approach, with a thin first deck to pre-emptively detonate bombs and missiles above the main armored deck, which is itself backed by a thinner spall deck and liner Finally, a helicopter hangar is featured on the Aft side with a maximum capacity of 3 maritime recon crafts. Propulsion The Leviathan class's main powerplant is the MKrH1 nuclear marine reactor. It is a fast-neutron, metal-cooled nuclear reaction using a Lead/Bismuth liquid metal coolant mixture and running high-enriched U235 as fuel. Four such reactors are installed longitudinally on the center of the Leviathan with compartmentalization bulkheads, designed in such a manner that even if one side of the reactor core is completely flooded, the individual core itself remains watertight and can theoretically still be operated and monitored from the other side. Each MKrH1 develops 600 Megawatt and is optimized to maximize electrical power generation rather than steam generation. The Leviathans are propelled by a turbo-electric transmission with four electrical motors powering four propeller shafts, rather than the more common steam turbines and geared shafts. Turbo-electric drives are heavier and more expensive than direct steam drives, but they are more agile and less vulnerable. They also generate more electrical power for the ship's systems. These advantages were known all the way to the early 1900s, but turbo-electric drives were never favored due to their higher weight in an era full of weight-limiting treaties and largely fell to obscurity since. The optimization of the MKrH1 is due to a belief that extremely high amounts of electrical power must be made available for the warships of the future, especially if they must power particularly voracious radar systems, or experimental systems such as electromagnetic launch rails for aircraft, energy-based interception systems, or rail-powered weapon systems Armament The Leviathan is an hybrid warship featuring both ballistic guns and missile launchers. The decision for this arrangement stems from the fact that shells are smaller, lighter and cheaper than missiles as well as harder to intercept at short range. Guns have more staying power in a protracted engagement or for shore bombardment, are more capable of supporting amphibious operations and do not require as much minute guidance as missiles. While they are not superior to missiles, they are an alternate tool for different situations with their advantages and drawbacks. For Anti-ship and anti-installation combat, the Leviathan's primary weapon systems are its main guns, two quad-mount turrets featuring 380mm guns situated one fore one aft, and the P-800 Oniks anti-ship and land attack cruise missiles. The guns fire rocket-assisted shells with a predicted range of 80 kilometers while the missiles have a range of 600 kilometers and a flight speed of Mach 2 to 3. The Oniks is capable of both sea-skimming and high profile trajectories, keeping supersonic speed at all phases and with a wide array of guidance packages. For Air Defence combat, the leviathan carries a mixture of medium and short range missiles against all targets from ballistic missiles to UAVs. The outermost layer of interception is carried out by S-300FM missiles with a range of up to 150km, with Tor-M1 and Tunguska missiles as the second layer, and Kashtan CIWS as the final layer. For anti-submarine combat, four 3-tubes 533mm torpedo tubes are present and armed with RPK-6 submerged-launched, anti-submarine missiles with a range of 100km. The missile complement of the Leviathan class, with the exception of the Kashtan Tunguskas and RPK-6 missiles is stored within 368 universal vertical launch cells. These are divided in six large centralized magazines and twenty small decentralized magazines. The centralized launchers are in 4 by 12 cells arrangement, with three of them located aft of the ship, and three more fore, for 48 each and 288 in those six. The decentralized launchers are in 1x4 arrangements and are located on the ship periphery like the American Mk.57. These 80 periphery launchers are only capable of firing air defense missiles and cannot fire cruise missiles due to being too small. Onikses are only stored in the larger centralized launchers. Electronics The Leviathan's electronics and sensor suite revolves around the Goliath system, which was developed in response to the Aegis system in use by NATO forces, and is used in the same role and purpose. Goliath features four main AESA radars functioning in different bands, with the long-range radars situated on the masts (S-band on the main mast and L-band on the foremast) and twin high-definition X-band radomes on the fore and aft castles. These radars are rounded up by passive and active sonars, including a towable sonar to reduce interferences. It is also capable of receiving and processing data from a number fo aerial sensors such as reconnaissance helicopters and AWACs. The Goliath system is responsible for a significant chunk of the Leviathan-class's power requirement and has yet to be proven in action. Countermeasures In addition to its air defense missiles, each Leviathan is armed with 9 Kashtan CIWS stations. Four of these are situated on each of the four corners of the citadel, two are situated aft, on the rear corners of the helipad, while the final three are fore, with one at the bow and two mid-way between the bow and citadel. These provide overlapping killing fields on a 360° around the ship. 6 RPK-8 12-tube ASW rocket batteries are also present, 3 on each side, again with one amidship, one fore and one aft. These are capable of targeting incoming torpedoes, small targets such as divers, and have sufficiently powerful warheads to damage submarines. ECM and ECCM counter-measures are taken care of by the Goliath system Ships Class Overview VKS Leviathan The VKS Leviathan, hull number BBGN-01 is the only currently active Leviathan and serves as the flagship of the Reinhard taskforce, deployed in September 2003 to the South Ocean. Despite the fearsome specs and appearance of the Leviathan, there are some rumors about the Goliath suite onboard not being fully operational, which has earned some internal criticism. Further criticism also came about from the quick deployment of the Leviathan only 6 weeks after the start of retraining. While the crew was already trained and experienced, it is judged that 6 weeks was a far too short adaptation time and that the competency and performance of the crew might suffer significantly as a result. A number of enhancements are currently under study including laser-guided shells for the guns, the use of an upscaled version of the ZP-1 armor system on its turrets, and the use of anaechoic tiles. Category:East Germany Category:Ships